California: It's for the rich

[purplkat]

Well, the state has already burned through half its firefighting budget fighting the big fire down near LA. A lot of the problem is that they can't just put in a good sized firebreak and let it burn, because there's a ton of houses built by people with no common sense out in the middle of fire country that the firefighters have to try and save,

Comments

[purplkat]

People -vastly- overestimate how common earthquakes are here, as well as their severity. I never understood it. People who live in places that get pounded by tornadoes every couple of years are all 'I couldn't live in California! There are -earthquakes-.'

The building codes here are very strict, and because of that, even the big earthquakes don't do a lot of damage. We had that overpass collapse like 20 years ago, and that's, as far as I can remember, the biggest earthquake-related disaster that's happened. Anything else comes in the form of cracked foundations or things of that nature, and that doesn't require emergency services to come out and risk their lives.

Contrast that with the wildfires which happen every. single. year.

In most of California, people have never even felt an earthquake, or if they have, it's only been a slight shaking. The only time Davis (where I live) ever shook, it was during the big earthquake in '89. When I lived in the Bay Area, the most I ever felt was a little unstableness, so slight that I often mistook it for being a litte dizzy, and I lived there for years.